Beach Head 2002
Score: 50% ESRB: Teen Publisher: Infogrames Developer: Digital Fusion Media: CD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Miscellaneous
Graphics & Sound: If this game was fun, I'd look the other way at its poor graphics. The one level you are forced to play on for the entire game is grainy and speckled with seams. The explosions and fire effects get boring after you've seen the same one a hundred times. The guns you use are poorly detailed, machine gun fire looks like fur balls instead of tracers, and the attacking troops only look semi-real at a distance. The only things that look somewhere like they're real life counterparts are the vehicles. Given the content of the game (which is very low), it's hard to see how this overwhelming defect went unnoticed. There is no music, except for at the title screen, and you'll be glad to get past it. The sound effects hardly make up for the bad graphics, but at least when I'm firing an M-60, it's loud. All of the guns have a certain bang to them, and the explosions will get your attention, even though there's only about two different sounds for them.
Gameplay: The entire concept of this game is this: kill everyone. There are no alternatives. You are bunkered down behind some sandbags and your only option is to shoot everything that moves. With the aid of an M-60 machine gun, cannon, vulcan machine gun, AA gun, some missiles, and a personal side arm, you are tasked to defend your fortification. The enemies you'll face along the way include troops, helicopters, planes, and tanks. Each gun you have has different effects on different enemies. There is a limited amount of ammo, so it's up to you to decide who deserves a bullet and who warrants a missile. Levels in Beach Head 2002 aren't ordinary levels. They're more like Pac Man levels with much less variety. Each level has a certain amount of enemies, and after you kill all of them, you go to the next level with more enemies, and after you kill all of them, you go to the next level with more enemies, and after you kill all of them ... .
Difficulty: There is no difficulty setting in Beach Head 2002. Instead, the levels become progressively harder until you get to the point where all fun is lost and you have to cheat. The range of difficulty is so vast that everyone (including pacifists) should be able to find their breaking point.
Game Mechanics: The outer appearance of this game might deceive you into thinking that the controls are easy. However, once you get going, the ugly secret is revealed. You have 360 degrees of movement at your disposal, but your gun seems to want to make use of all 360 of them at all times. Your crosshairs are always moving, and the speed depends on how fast you moved your mouse. In a large fray, you will quickly find yourself spinning in circles so fast that you'll wish you could turn the gun on yourself. A simple scheme gone horribly wrong. Aside from that, there are only a couple of keyboard commands that switch between weapons and fire missiles and flares. Should we say this game is 'quality over quantity' or 'quantity over quality'? Neither term fits here. Beach Head 2002 lacks so much content that I'm surprised it worked on my computer. If you ever think of buying this game, save yourself some pain and just squirt lemon juice in your eyeball.
-Snow Chainz, GameVortex Communications AKA Andrew Horwitz
Minimum System Requirements: 350 MHz processor, WIndows 95/98/ME, 64 MB RAM, 8X CD-ROM, 90 MB Hard Disk space, DirectX compatible sound card, 16 MB DirectX compatible video card   Test System: Windows 98, 1.4GHz AMD Athlon, GeForce 2 mx 32MB video card, 40 gig hard drive, 56x CD-ROM, 256MB DDR Ram, Sound Blaster Live! sound card, T1 Internet connection
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